To ban or not to ban: Ghana sinking in sea of plastics

By Rachel Kakraba

Government is streamlining the law governing the plastic industry to ban single use plastics. The move has become necessary following the ever-increasing menace of plastic waste in Ghana.

“We will not shy away to them and we will actually activate and pass the necessary legislation to ban not all the plastics but those areas. Which areas am I referring to the single use plastics and specifically in the Ghanaian situation, most of them are under the 20 microns”?

Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie announced this during a tour of some plastics industries in Accra.  He said the plastic waste menace which was largely a problem in Southern Ghana is today a major issue in Northern Ghana as well, adding some drastic measures have to be made to change the narrative.

Dr. Afriyie, said the decision to ban certain types of plastics has become necessary as the country is sinking in a sea of plastics and the earlier the problem is addressed the better.

“Ghana is sinking in a sea of plastics, if you think Accra is littered with plastics, do just visit the North. Somehow in the south, because of the vegetation, the greenery it has obscured the problem, but the problem is universal and it’s very graphic particularly in the North.

The Minister’s visit took him to Miniplast Company Limited and Dolphil Group Limited, both in the plastic recycling industry. At Miniplast Chief Executive, Nadim Ghanem, said the company ventured into plastic recycling as a way of preserving the future.

“We thought recycling was one of the most important investments and that is why today we have got the largest recycling company in Ghana”.

At Dophil which recycles plastics into roofing sheets. Chief Executive Dr. Kwaku Agyapong, was hopeful their business will help deal with the sanitation menace.

“We realized that there is a need to take the roofing into a different level, so we came up with a system trying to solve a problem by cleaning the waste in the system, and also converting it into the roofing tiles. This product is one of its kind can last up to hundred years, so we are better off collecting the waste, keep the city clean, Ghana clean and also using it for some purpose”

The Sector Minister, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie said lots of stakeholder engagements have been ongoing to ensure relevant approaches are adopted to end the plastic waste menace, adding his visit to the plastics companies is one of the ways of engaging major stakeholders.

“The plastics in Ghana, we have analyzed our situation a lot of work that has been done by my predecessors especially at the policy end, but at the operational end or the programme end we have fallen short. We have formed institutions; we have had institutional and sectoral collaborations. Only last week I had a meeting with the Minister for Local government, Sanitation and Water Resources and the Minister for Fisheries.  I have had formal and informal conversations and meetings with them and every person who mattered”.

He said the plastic waste problem is not peculiar to Ghana but a global problem, which is worse in Sub Saharan Africa.

“The nature of the problem is huge, it’s an international problem, some 400 million metric tons of plastics, and I’m quoting 2017 figures are manufactured worldwide annually. We can barely recycle 20 % of it and in especially the tropical world, it’s even worse and in Sub-Saharan Africa is worse”.

Dr. Afriyie in acknowledging the contribution of the plastic industry said a ban on the single use plastics will be a gradual process to offer industry players time for retooling.

The government some years back shot down suggestions by some stakeholders to ban the use of plastics as a way of tackling the waste generated especially as Ghanaians heavily depended on it.

Already Kenya and Tanzania are among 60 other countries that have banned or partially banned single-use plastic bags.